An Overview of the Pinfire Revolver System
Forgotten Weapons
•
13m
The pinfire system was an early cartridge type which saw widespread use in Europe, but was not widely adopted in the United States. First invented by a French designer named Pauly, it was made commercially feasible by Casimir Lefacheaux. It was Casimir's son Eugene, however, who took the pinfire cartridge to its full potential, garnering a French military contract in the 1850s and building Lefacheaux into one of the largest French/Belgian non-government arms manufacturers in the mid 1800s.
Todays we are looking at an assortment of pinfire revolvers, to get some basic idea for the sort of variety that was made over the decades. Small to large, plain to fancy, and with all manner of quirky details (like folding bayonets and Lefacheaux's triple-action fire control system).
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
CZ Model S Prototype (1929)
This CZ Model S rifle is one of many prototypes made between the world wars in Czechoslovakia in an effort to develop a military semiautomatic rifle. Similar efforts were underway in most other countries at the same time (basically every place that had a mature arms industry), and a huge variety ...
-
German Sten Copy: MP 3008, aka Gerät ...
The MP 3008, aka Gerät Neumünster, was one of two German efforts to copy the British Sten gun. The first was the Gerät Potsdam ("gerät" meaning device or project; basically project code name), which was a direct copy of the Sten distinguishable only by a marking details and a few differences in m...
-
Reifgraber .38 S&W Automatic
Designed by Austrian immigrant Joseph Joachim Reifgraber, this is a prototype gas-assisted short recoil pistol in a .38 rimmed revolver cartridge. While this version did not see any serial production, the Union Firearms Company of Toledo (Ohio) did market a slightly smaller model in .32 S&W (and ...